In a crisis, transparency, accountability, and a coherent plan with dearly delineated goals are essential to maintain the confidence of the public and the public and capital markets.

The American people want to know what's going on and they deserve answers.

Frankly, Senator, I just don't think we are at trust anymore. I want to see the mechanisms.

when Citibank is declared a healthy bank and then within a matter of weeks is declared at risk of bringing down the whole system, we have to have some skepticism about the identification of these banks as healthy banks.

I think we start by telling the truth, and that means if we have financial institutions who have liabilities up here and the value of their assets is down here...

the concept of flexibility and giving a lot of flexibility to the Secretary of Treasury was a very reasonable and thoughtful approach.

I think we are way past 'Trust me.' I am an empiricist. Show me what you have done and I will tell you whether or not I think it addresses the problem.

Treasury must do a better job of implementing four critical elements: transparency, assertiveness, accountability, and clarity.

Treasury may have pursued policy objectives in overpaying for assets, but if so, they did not clearly articulate those objectives.

One possibility, they could say they are not lending because there aren't good lending opportunities.

We think it is really important that you back up and say, maybe the problem is different.